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  “I only wanted to suggest that perhaps this is something Mr. Soto’s whole doctoral committee should hear about. I could call Dr. Sass and Dr. Rudmann.”

  “An excellent idea,” Michael said. “I’m sure we can sort this all out with their help.”

  Abe Sass and Art Rudmann, in addition to being the balance of Ramon’s dissertation committee, were the two senior drama professors in the department and the only tenured ones. Both were somewhat elderly, since they’d been hired before the English department had begun what Michael referred to as its militant repression of the drama curriculum. And they were good friends and staunch allies of Michael’s.

  “I fail to see what there is to sort out,” Dr. Wright said. “The department’s decision on this is non-negotiable.”

  “But perhaps there is a value in explaining the issues involved to the entire committee at once,” Dr. Blanco said. “Let’s schedule something.”

  Clearly he was a man more comfortable with compromise than open conflict. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his PDA. After frowning slightly—a small crack in the façade of bureaucractic solidarity!—Dr. Wright began tapping again on hers.

  “As it happens, I was supposed to meet both of them this afternoon for a meeting on another subject,” Michael said. “Why don’t I call and suggest they come out here a little earlier, since you’re already here.”

  “And since we have heat,” I added. “We can find you a warm place to work in the meantime.”

  “I have a rather busy schedule today,” Blanco began.

  “But this is a rather important issue,” Wright said. Was there a note of deliberate sarcasm in the way she echoed the word rather? Perhaps another crack? “And we’d have finished this by now if you’d been on time.”

  Definitely a crack.

  “If you feel it’s essential,” Blanco murmured. His shoulders were hunched, making him look like a turtle trying to pull its head into its shell.

  “I’ll call right now,” Michael said. He pulled out his cell phone and stepped into the living room, presumably to make his calls in greater privacy.

  Wright and Blanco turned to me. Dr. Wright took a step closer to me, and I sneezed several times. Apparently she was the source of the perfume reek. Luckily my sneezing encouraged her to take a step back.

  “We’ll need someplace to work,” Dr. Wright announced. “I will require a place where I can use my laptop.”

  “I’d like a room where I can make some phone calls,” Blanco said. “Without disturbing Dr. Wright.”

  I got the impression that disturbing Dr. Wright was something he tried at avoid at all costs.

  “Most of our rooms are dormitories right now,” I said. “How about our library? It’s a bit messy—the students have been using it as a sort of common area. But I’ll keep them out for the time being. And Dr. Blanco, if you need a place to make calls where you won’t disturb Dr. Wright, you could either use the sunporch off the library or my office.”

  “Your office might be preferable,” Blanco began. “It’s near the library?”

  “No, it’s out in the barn,” I said. He blinked in surprise. “I’m a blacksmith,” I explained, “so it makes sense for me to have my office near my forge. But don’t worry; it’s got a space heater.”

  “Well, if—” Blanco began.

  Just then Señor Mendoza erupted from the kitchen. He was managing an impressive speed, especially considering that he was waving his walking stick over his head instead of using it for support. Behind him surged a crowd of students.

  “What’s going on here?” Michael asked, sticking his head out into the hall. His words were lost in the confusion.

  Mendoza stumped over to Wright and Blanco and began shouting at them. In English.

  “Philistines!” he shouted. “Book burners! Assassins of culture! Jackals without souls! Harpies!”

  He kept on in much the same vein, and I found myself thinking that considering English was his second—if not third—language, he really did have quite a gift for fiery, nonobscene invective. I was just considering whether to fish my notebook out of my pocket and jot down a few choice insults when Mendoza stopped and clutched at his chest.

  Chapter 5

  The students seemed frozen in shock at seeing Señor Mendoza’s distress.

  “Someone help him,” I shouted. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Fetch Dr. Langslow!” Michael said, as he hurried to Mendoza’s side. “He’s out in the yard.”

  Several students scurried to follow his orders. One, more quick-thinking than the rest, grabbed a chair and he and Michael eased the old playwright into it.

  “Someone run to the bathroom and get the aspirin, in case he’s having a heart attack,” I called.

  Several students ran off to follow my orders. Mendoza rattled off something in Spanish that seemed to reassure those who could understand it. Then he reached into his pocket and took out an enormous pill bottle and handed it to one of the students.

  “Apparently he’s not having an attack.” Michael had returned with a chair for me. “His heart fluttered, and it reminded him that he’s not supposed to excite himself and that he had not yet taken his heart pills today.”

  “Probably atrial fibrillation,” I said, as I sank gratefully onto the chair. “Dad should still check him out.”

  “And maybe your father could give him a bottle that doesn’t have a childproof cap,” Michael said. Even the student was having trouble opening the top.

  “Oops!” the student said, as tiny white pills sprayed out like a fountain. About twenty people almost simultaneously dropped to their hands and knees and began scrabbling on the floor, like devotees of a strange religion abasing themselves.

  “No hurry! No hurry!” Mendoza shouted. “See? I caught one!”

  He held up a small white pill. A sublingual nitroglycerin tablet? Digoxin? As a doctor’s daughter, I could hazard a guess what they might be, but I couldn’t see well enough to tell. Whatever it was, he put it into his mouth. Someone put a wineglass into his hand—.

  “Not wine!” I shouted. “Not with heart pills!” But no one appeared to hear me. Señor Mendoza washed the pill down with a healthy slug of red wine, and then leaned back in his chair to watch the pill retrieval. Students were swarming over every inch of the hall floor, looking for and occasionally finding the tiny pills.

  Within seconds, Drs. Blanco and Wright were the only people, apart from Mendoza and me, not on their knees searching for the pills. At least Mendoza and I were interested bystanders—the prunes merely looked on disapprovingly. When one of the students came too close to Dr. Wright, she stepped back, slipped on something—probably a stray pill—and fell. Luckily she fell against one of the coatracks, so her landing was well cushioned.

  “Look what you’ve done!” Blanco snapped, to no one in particular, as he swooped down to help his colleague. A good thing he was so eager because no one else seemed upset at her mishap.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Stop fussing over me.”

  “Look out! El perro!” Mendoza shouted.

  I looked down to see Spike licking the floor.

  “He’s trying to eat Señor Mendoza’s heart pills!” I shouted. “Stop him!”

  For once, I managed to move tolerably fast—or maybe I only beat everyone else because the students had been here long enough to have acquired a healthy fear of the Small Evil One, as we called him. Michael swooped down to grab Spike and held him while I pried open his jaws.

  “Did he eat any of the pills?” Michael asked.

  “There’s nothing in his mouth, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have swallowed one,” I said. Just then I spotted my father in the doorway with his black doctor’s bag. “Dad! How fast would Señor Mendoza’s heart medicine work?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Where’s the patient?”

  “Check Señor Mendoza out,” I said, pointing. “And find out what those pills are and what to do if Spike ate one!”
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br />   Spike was struggling to get down, but I could see at least one more of the little pills on the floor, and the students all seemed to be watching Dad and Señor Mendoza, who were conversing in a mixture of Spanish and English.

  “Get that one,” I called, pointing to the stray pill. Michael handed Spike to me and stooped to retrieve the pill.

  “Doctor!” Blanco called. “Please see to Dr. Wright. I am concerned that she may have broken something in her fall.”

  “Nonsense,” Dr. Wright snapped. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “Broken bones aren’t nearly as dangerous as heart attacks,” I said.

  “Or digitalis overdoses,” Dad said, looking stern. “If that’s what those pills are—he doesn’t have them in the original container, so I can’t be sure. See if you can make him throw up. Spike, I mean,” he added. “Señor Mendoza will be fine if he stops overexciting himself.”

  “Sardines,” I said. “Spike loves them, but he chokes them down too fast and then pukes. Find some sardines.”

  “I’ll get them,” Rose Noire said, and ran for the kitchen. Thank goodness she was willing. All this talk of retching had me on the brink without even smelling the sardines.

  “Better yet, syrup of ipecac,” Dad said. “I have some in my bag. Ah, here.” He handed Michael a bottle and a syringe. “Squirt some in his mouth—let’s see, I think one and a half ccs should do the trick.”

  Dad turned back to Señor Mendoza, and from his calm expression I could tell that he wasn’t unduly worried about his patient.

  “If we could have some medical attention for Dr. Wright, please,” Dr. Blanco said.

  Dad smiled, shook hands with Señor Mendoza, and strode over to kneel down beside Dr. Wright. I felt myself relaxing. If Dad was taking his eyes off a patient, it meant he truly wasn’t worried—not just because he was a painstakingly conscientious doctor, but because there was nothing Dad would enjoy more than a breakneck ambulance ride to the Caerphilly Hospital and a few hours working side by side with the emergency room staff. I headed out for the kitchen with Spike.

  While I barged through the swarming students with Spike under one arm, out in the kitchen, Rose Noire had opened a tin of sardines and was dumping the fish onto a plate. These days I could bulldoze through crowds with remarkable ease. I wasn’t sure if it was the physical effect of being five foot ten and temporarily almost as wide, or whether everyone just scrambled out of my way these days out of sheer terror that the slightest nudge would send me into labor, but whatever it was worked. I set Spike down on the kitchen table.

  “Hold his mouth open,” Michael said.

  I suddenly realized that I was about to get sick. Maybe it was the smell of the sardines added to that of the paella.

  “I have to sit down,” I said. “Can someone take over here?”

  The students who were crowded around the table took a few steps back and looked uneasily at each other.

  “I’ll do it,” Rose Noire said. She was a seasoned Spike-wrangler. She distracted Spike by waving the sardines near his nose and then clamped her hands down on him while I let go. I sat down as far from the sardines as I could and still see what was going on. Michael grabbed a small piece of sardine, waved it near Spike’s nose, and while the Small Evil One was snapping at it, Michael managed to squirt the syrup of ipecac into Spike’s mouth. Then he tossed in the sardine scrap to keep Spike from spitting out the medicine.

  “Do you think it’s going to work?” one of the students asked.

  No one answered. We all stood or sat staring at Spike until the Small Evil One stopped trying to bite Rose Noire and waited expectantly.

  Or maybe he could feel the syrup of ipecac working. After a few moments he whined slightly, then vomited just as Dad came bustling into the kitchen.

  “Good work!” Dad exclaimed.

  Rose Noire, bless her heart, was already running to fetch cleaning supplies.

  “Look!” Michael said, pointing. “It’s one of the digitalis pills!”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said. Its brief stay in Spike’s stomach had not improved the smell of the sardine.

  “Do you think he swallowed any more?” a student asked.

  “I doubt he could have swallowed any long ago enough for them to make it out of the stomach and into the intestines,” Dad said, peering over Michael’s shoulder. “Too fast. Which is a lucky thing, because if he had, he’d be in bad shape. Meg, are you all right?”

  “I will be if someone will take those sardines away,” I said.

  “I’ll give them to Spike,” Rose Noire said, as she continued mopping the table. “Poor sick little doggie!”

  “No, they’ll only make him sicker,” I said. “And he wouldn’t be sick if he hadn’t stupidly gobbled up Señor Mendoza’s heart medicine. Get his crate; we’ll need to keep an eye on him, and we don’t dare let him out until we’ve picked up all the pills.”

  “I’ll do it,” Rose Noire said.

  “No, we should have him checked out a little more carefully,” Dad said. “I’ll take him—I’m sure Clarence can work him in. Just call my iPhone if you need me.”

  Dad tucked Spike under one arm and hurried out. I felt relieved, not only because Spike was going to see the vet—I could stop worrying about him—but also because I knew Dad wouldn’t be going anywhere if he thought his human patients needed observation.

  And maybe Clarence would insist on keeping Spike overnight. That thought made me downright cheerful.

  “Okay, Dad’s got Spike,” I said. “We need to put Professors Wright and Blanco someplace. I was thinking the library, although that would delay Ramon’s next rehearsal.”

  “I think it will have to be the library,” Rose Noire said. I sighed. Normally I loved even the thought of our library. Having a whole room devoted to books and reading had always been my idea of ultimate luxury. And ours, which a previous owner had built as a ballroom, was large enough to hold any amount of books Michael and I could ever imagine accumulating. But so far, it only held half a dozen Ikea shelves and a lot of book boxes, and even those were now completely hidden by an ocean of clutter. The drama students had been using our library as their common room and rehearsal hall. In addition to Ramon’s props and costumes, it was filled with piles of books, papers, CDs, pizza boxes, soda cans, coffee mugs, and stray items of clothing. Not a sight I relished showing to unfriendly eyes. But I couldn’t think of an alternative.

  “The library it is, then,” I said. “Rose Noire, could you show Professor Wright there? I think Professor Blanco wanted some privacy to make phone calls, so perhaps someone could show him to my office.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Probable Alice said.

  “No problem,” Rose Noire said. “Alice and I will take care of everything.”

  Neither of them seemed to notice the demotion I’d given the prunes.

  “Make sure the door to Michael’s office is still locked,” I told Rose Noire in an undertone. “And the doors between his office and the library. And—”

  “Of course,” she said, and hurried toward the door to the hall.

  I didn’t have to give Alice any instructions about my office because anything sensitive or valuable had already been locked up months ago, when I got too large to get near my anvil and had to put my blacksmithing business on hold for the balance of my pregnancy.

  “And you might open the French doors to the sunporch and crack a few of the jalousies,” I called after Rose Noire. “A little ventilation would be nice. She’s wearing gallons of some ghastly perfume that makes me sneeze.”

  “The library will be freezing if I do that!” Rose Noire protested.

  “True,” I said.

  “We’ll give it a good airing as soon as she leaves,” Michael said.

  “Good idea,” I said as Rose Noire tripped away. “Michael, can we talk for a moment?”

  I indicated the pantry and Michael followed me in.

  Of course, so did the smell of the sardines,
mingling with the remnants of the paella. In the small space of the pantry, the odors seemed more overwhelming.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said. And then he noticed my face and scrambled to find something on the shelves.

  “Here.” He twisted open the top of a little jar of stick cinnamon and handed it to me.

  “You’re a mind reader,” I said, holding the jar to my nose. “That helps.”

  “The zarzuela’s a little overwhelming,” he said.

  “Zarzuela? I thought that was a kind of theater?”

  “It’s also a kind of Catalan fish stew—sort of like bouillabaisse.”

  I wrinkled my nose at the thought.

  “I thought he was fixing paella.”

  “He’s fixing both.”

  “Yuck.”

  “Just inhale the cinnamon,” Michael said. He unfolded the stepping stool I kept in the pantry to reach the top shelves, and I perched on the seat. “It’s supposed to stimulate the brain.”

  “Brain stimulation’s good,” I said. “Because we need to strategize.”

  “Art and Abe are on their way,” he said. He had closed his eyes and was leaning against the door. “You realize that this could torpedo my bid for tenure.”

  There. One of us had said it aloud. According to all the new age books Rose Noire kept giving me, naming a worry was supposed to help you realize that it wasn’t really as bad as you feared. But this was every bit that bad. It plopped down and brought our conversation to a dead stop as both of us thought about it.

  “Yes,” I said finally. “But Dr. Wright’s probably already gunning for you. And anyway—can you live with yourself if you don’t at least try to fix things?”

  “No,” he said, without hesitation. “We have to help Ramon. I just wanted to make sure you were okay with it.”

  “I’m fine with it,” I said.

  “And I think Groucho and Harpo would understand,” Michael said.

  “Oh, God,” I said, clutching my belly. “Not Groucho and Harpo!”

  “Why not? I thought you liked the Marx Brothers.”

  “Yes, but there were three of them—don’t forget Chico. Haven’t there been rare cases where people thought they were having twins and ended up with triplets? Don’t jinx us!”